


If / And / Or

by bratfarrar



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 5 Things, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8224937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/pseuds/bratfarrar
Summary: John/Rodney, trapped, computer, rescue





	

**Author's Note:**

> For timespirt's prompt, though I never could get this thing to congeal into more than bits and pieces.
> 
> Warning for a falsehood in advertising: this is actually 3 things plus a 4th bit.

**1\. (John, computer)**

John stumbled across the not-Tetris game buried in the 'jumper programming completely by accident, in the middle of a crisis that had him madly scrolling through menus and options in the hope of locating something to take care of giant, impossible metal-eating alien spiders. It later took him the majority of a 10-hour flight, isolated in the cockpit while everyone else played strip poker in the cargo bay, to rediscover it deliberately. (What _was_ up with Ancient technology being either so intuitive you could do crazy things entirely by accident, or so opaque that it seemed you could _only_ do things by accident?) But by the time Rodney grouched in, having abandoned the game only just in time to preserve his boxers, John had racked up a score of 5,230,945 and was on level 174, where the pieces moved so fast that only a semi-telepathic interface could keep up.

 

**2\. (John & Rodney, trapped)**

One of these days, John would catch on that when Rodney said “strong energy signal” he actually meant “someone might have a flashlight turned on somewhere”, and when he said “quick look-see” (or the Rodney equivalent) it inevitably led to him spending five hours slowly burying himself in Ancient technology, while John was forced to stand watch in case of physicist-eating alien bears. Which, yes, not all that funny in light of the Wraiths’ existence, but John was starting to get a bit punchy. An afternoon of nothing but surveying the same twenty feet of hallway--even an alien hallway with taste in wallpaper that would make the 70's cringe--was enough to drive anyone slightly around the corner of sanity out of mere self-preservation.

 

**3\. (Rodney, rescue)**

At the beginning, every crisis averted had warranted a mental note, complete with red letters and underlining--these days, he's saved Atlantis so many times that it's almost literally written in his job description somewhere, and has gotten his teams' collective behinds out of trouble (admittedly, sometimes because he got them _into_ it in the first place) often enough that it's become just another day at the office. If he'd known beforehand that it was going to be like this, he probably would have volunteered to stay in Siberia--so it's just as well he didn't. He's almost mature enough these days to admit that as much as he's saved Atlantis from aliens and monster hurricanes, Atlantis has saved him from the man he used to be.

 

**+1. (random snippet I like too much to simply toss)**

John knew the signs: if allowed, Rodney would completely disappear into the console, demanding a 24 hour extension on the mission (and the coffee out of everyone’s MREs to fuel him for the duration).


End file.
